Ascent

A truly stunning novel - spare, powerful and ultimately awesome - Ascent will propel Jed Mercurio into the first rank of British novelists.

Yefgenii Yeremin is a flyer and he is a phantom. In the Korean War, he is the legendary ace dubbed 'Ivan the Terrible', shooting down more American jets than any other pilot in history. But the Soviet Union's involvement in Korea must be kept secret, so Yefgenii is exiled to a remote Arctic base, his name unknown, his victories uncelebrated.

A truly stunning novel of one man's dangerous obsession with immortality, from the BAFTA award-winning creator of Bodyguard and Line of Duty and co-creator of the graphic novel Sleeper.

ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S '1000 NOVELS EVERYONE MUST READ'

'A completely gripping, read-at-once novel' The Times

Yefgenii Yeremin is a flyer and a phantom.

Destined to go down in Soviet history books as 'Ivan the Terrible', the most deadly fighter pilot of the Korean War, one moment of madness sees Yefgenii throwing his reputation to the wind. Exiled to a remote Arctic base, his name unknown and victories uncelebrated, he must endure a fate worse than death: anonymity.

But when a man arrives from Moscow's Space Committee in search of a volunteer prepared to sacrifice himself for his country, Yefgenii seizes his one last chance of immortality.